As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended¹ the Veneering staircase, Mortimer, following them forth² from the dining-room, turned into a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded⁴, and requested to see the messenger who had brought the paper. He was a boy of about fifteen. Mortimer looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury in more gold frame than procession, and more carving⁵ than country.

‘Whose writing is this?’

‘Mine, sir.’

‘Who told you to write it?’

‘My father, Jesse Hexam.’

‘Is it he who found the body?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What is your father?’

The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they had involved him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in the right leg of his trousers, ‘He gets his living along-shore.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Is which far?’ asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon the road to Canterbury.

‘To your father’s?’

‘It’s a goodish stretch, sir. I come up in a cab, and the cab’s waiting to be paid. We could go back in it before you paid it, if you liked. I went first to your office, according to the direction of the papers found in the pockets, and there I see nobody but a chap of about my age who sent me on here.’

There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery⁶, and uncompleted civilization. His voice was hoarse⁷ and coarse, and his face was coarse, and his stunted⁹ figure was coarse; but he was cleaner than other boys of his type; and his writing, though large and round, was good; and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an

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